


Litany (in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out)

by Raven_Kween



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Blumencrew, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Torture, Just Vollstrucker Things, M/M, Multi, Scourgers, The Blumentrio, Vollstruckers, Warning: Trent Ikithon, hints of widojest, murder in the name of the Empire, pining widojest, the Blumenthal Drei
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26472916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_Kween/pseuds/Raven_Kween
Summary: Her first year at the Soltryce Academy, Astrid hates Bren Aldric Ermendrud. Everything comes easily to him. Nothing comes easily to Astrid.
Relationships: Astrid/Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Astrid/Caleb Widogast, Astrid/Eodwulf/Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 18
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter One

_Every morning the maple leaves.  
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts  
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big  
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out  
You will be alone always and then you will die. _

Her first year at the Soltryce Academy, Astrid hates Bren Aldric Ermendrud. Everything comes easily to him: the seals, the symbols, the smiles of the professors and the other students. She never falls for his smiles, even though they flash over his face like a fish leaping out of the pond back home. Nothing comes easily to Astrid. 

At night she lies awake on her lumpy cot, sweat trickling under her arms and between her breasts wondering: _Why me? They must have made a mistake. Tomorrow they will realize, tomorrow they will send me back to the Zemni Fields, back to that small, stuffy town, back to my father…_

She spirals down a vicious cycle, hero of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Night after night she lies sleepless like a princess under a curse, convinced she will fail. The resulting exhaustion makes her clumsy, stupid, slow. 

In class she fucks up a glyph of warding, snapping her chalk between her fingers as the anger and shame sweep through her. The chalk breaks, of course, and she has no chalk to finish the fucking glyph. 

Bren slides his chalk across the desk to her, that smile surfacing across his face, his jaw dusted with red stubble, his nose too big for his face - but he was growing into that, wasn’t he? Just like she was growing into her breasts, she knew because of how the boys had begun to offer hugs in the hallways and after dinner, or brushed against her in the hall. Never Bren, though. Bren always looks her in the eye. 

His blue eyes not blue like the sky over the Zemni Fields, blue as the ice that rimes the river in the dead of winter are warm with amusement as he pushes his chalk toward her. 

“Here. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Astrid wants to take it, knows she’s not supposed to, it’s breaking the rules, but she is so tired and her chalk is powder in her hands and Bren has already finished his equation because of course he has. She reaches out and takes the chalk, Bren’s fingers brushing hers in the exchange, lingering a second too long. She bends over her work with a smile, her exhaustion magically fading away. A shadow falls across her desk. 

“Rules are the marrow of the Empire. Those who break the rules must be punished, must they not?”

Master Ikithon places a heavy hand on Bren’s shoulder, which sinks under the weight.

“Yes, Master Ikithon,” Bren murmurs, his shoulders tensing for what’s coming. Astrid looks away, at the chalk on her fingers, at the whorls in the wood of her desk, anything so she doesn’t have to watch what’s about to happen to Bren. 

“It is an important lesson to learn,” Master Ikithon murmurs, and lifts his fingers, pointing not at Bren, but at Astrid. 

Astrid feels every muscle seize with sudden pain, as a crackle of white-hot electricity jolts from Master Ikithon’s hand to her own. She grips the top of the desk through the spasms and grits her teeth. She won’t scream again.

Bren’s eyes burn. “Master Ikithon, stop! Astrid has done nothing wrong. I was the one who -”  
Another bolt of electricity shakes Astrid’s bones.  
“Shut...up...” she manages to hiss at Bren. His face falls. 

Master Ikithon’s eyes crinkle up at the corners. “Very good, Astrid,” he murmurs. “Can you explain to Bren why?”

Astrid wipes a thread of drool away from the corner of her mouth. “A mage of the Empire does not accept pity.” 

She likes the shock that blooms across his face more than his smiles. But Bren does not learn Master Ikithon’s lesson. He continues to help her, quiet but persistently. He haunts the hall outside her door. He walks her to class, talking her through incantations as they go. He admires her deft touch with potions, her instinct for components. He introduces her to Eodwulf and Astrid feels part of something for the first time, one of three instead of one alone. 

****************************  
The next year is easier and harder all at once. 

Master Ikithon moves them to a tower, Astrid and Bren and Eodwulf. Skilled and special and powerful. The tower doors lock at night, sealed with glyphs of warding, but Astrid pretends not to mind. It only takes them a few months to learn how to disable the wards and sneak out into the night streets of Rexxentrum. Beer halls and book shops and bumping into people on the street as they run back to the tower before dawn so they can rebuild the wards. Sometimes Astrid wonders if this is Master Ikithon’s design. Wulf snorts and tells her she’s paranoid, but Bren bites his lip and thinks. 

Designs are Master Ikithon’s specialty. Designing their curriculum, designing the tower, designing the patterns of the crystals he embeds in their arms. Astrid traces the patterns, teaches herself to see the beauty in the maze-like designs grafted into her skin. She feels the power thrumming under her fingertips. It softens the long days, the painful hours. Astrid knows how to handle pain, has spent her childhood learning. 

Bren, not so much. 

He handles his own pain no worse than the rest of them, eyes clouding over as he goes to some other place. It’s the pain of others that Bren is unable to stomach. Astrid sees it in the tense line of his mouth when Eodwulf splinters a traitor’s bone instead of breaking it cleanly shards poking through the skin, when a heretic chokes on the potion Astrid pours down his throat, when Bren’s flames draw out sweat and a confession from a dissident. 

At night, after the hunt, she holds Bren while he shudders and Eodwulf rubs circles in both of their backs. We believe in the Empire. We are going to make it strong, Astrid tells him, running her fingers through the soft stubble of his hair. 

The trick is to find the beauty in the suffering. It’s always there if you look for it. Bren nods and kisses her neck, but she is not sure if he hears her. 

**************************************  
Sometimes, Astrid wonders if Bren hates her. 

The thinks about it when they’re fucking in her room (always her room), hands mashed over each others’ mouths to muffle their gasps and grunts. When he comes, she imagines him filling her with his hate, pouring it into her as she shakes above him. 

She imagines it until she half-believes it, and one day she asks him. The look of shock he gives her, his face twisting in pain, makes her wish she hadn’t. 

“How can you think that, how can you think that Astrid, I love you, I love you…” 

Eodwulf shoots her a quelling look over the top of Bren’s head. Quiet, look what you’re doing to him, he Messages her, his voice pounding like a headache. But Wulf doesn’t understand, he has no imagination. He is satisfied with sweat and spit and two sets of hands on him. It’s enough for Wulf to hold them both after, three heads on her pillow, 

After that, when they fuck, Bren holds her like glass, like precious components, his touches too gentle, too reverent, too good for her, until she spits in his face and growls at him to leave. Maybe if he hated her, she wouldn’t hate herself so fucking much. Maybe if she hated him, she wouldn’t feel so weak all the time. 

Sometimes Astrid can’t tell if her love for Bren is the last thread of her sanity, or if it’s the knife that’s slowly cutting through it.  
**************************

It is harder than she thought, harder and easier all at once. Her mother is so trusting as Astrid helps her cut the vegetables for the stew, chattering away that she’s sure Astrid gets much better fare at the Academy now, she must be since she has some meat on her bones, now. Her father is already drunk. It is shockingly easy to reach for the cut-glass vial in the bandolier across her chest, to push out the stopper with her thumbnail and flick three drops, no more, no less, into her mother’s cup, her father’s stein. Astrid has practiced it hundreds of times. 

Bren meets her eyes across the table and the pain filling them mirrors her own, but he is calm, his eyes are blue pools so deep Astrid is drowning in them and for a moment she forgets, she breathes, and by the time she looks away from him and at her parents it is over. Their heads hit the tabletop, the pine wood scarred by knife cuts and grease from decades of meals. Blood and bile mix with spilled beer. 

Then they go to Bren’s house, and everything goes to hell. 

****************************  
Ash and flame everywhere. Everything burning. Astrid can’t tell where the screams are coming from - the Ermendrud farmhouse with its thatched roof smoking, or from Bren, his hands curled around orbs of fire. It’s noisy and it’s theatrical and it’s excessive and it’s beautiful and it’s Bren. Any minute now the people of Blumenthal will come with buckets and blankets to help. 

“Shut him up,” Eodwulf tells her, not unkindly, his large hands tracing the sigils of Dimension Door. 

She doesn’t need him to tell her, doesn’t need his permission, she needs Bren. She is already running across the field towards his shaking form, waves of heat washing over her face. 

“Bren!” she half-chokes. “Come on _schatz_ , we’ve got to go, I’m here, I’ve got you.”  
He doesn’t hear her. He is frozen, staring as his childhood home goes up in flames. There’s no time for this, mourning is a luxury and mourning traitors is treason. That old spark of anger flares in Astrid. She was given no time to mourn. 

“Komm, wir müssen hier raus!” She grabs his arm and his spins, eyes empty, and catches her throat. Searing pain erupts on her neck, crawls up her face, as his still-burning hands melt her skin. The flames dance in Bren’s eyes, the only sign of life flickering in those hollow sockets. 

Astrid welcomes the darkness as it rises to greet her. 

********************  
“Astrid.”

Astrid jolts awake. She blinks at the clean tile of the Academy’s infirmary, at Master Ikithon sitting by her bedside. In the space between her eyes and eyelids, the night comes rushing back. 

“Where’s Bren?”

A stupid question. Some small, screaming, horrible part of Astrid, the survivor in her, tries to choke back the words even as she opens her mouth in Bren’s defense. Once he has decided on a course of action, Master Ikithon does not tolerate questions. 

“Master, Bren will get better. If I could speak with him, I can help him - “  
Master Ikithon cuts her off. 

“Your loyalty is to be commended. It is a pity you could not fuck the weakness out of him.” 

Astrid gasps for air. So he knows. He has always known. The thing she thought was theirs, that last private corner of her mind, was made of glass this whole time. 

And somehow that knowledge hurts more than the crystals growing agonizingly slowly through the muscle and skin of her arms. Worse than the shocks of electricity that seized her muscles and rattled her teeth. Worse than doors of the tower when she hammered them with her fists to get out, get out, get out -

“You must understand, this is for his safety and yours. It is for the Empire.”

Astrid draws in a ragged breath, stretching the newly healed skin on her neck, and nods. 

“That’s a good girl,” Trent smiles, gently touching her cheek. His fingers are dry and cool and do absolutely nothing to dull the pain.


	2. Chapter Two

_I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,  
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.  
I’m not the princess either.  
Who am I? _

Astrid and Wulf visit Bren sometimes at Vergusson. Master Ikithon urges them to, to see if it will spark his memory, ignite some semblance of sanity. He requests detailed reports of his favorite students’ state. 

Astrid resents the paperwork, when she sees the guards posted outside Bren’s door. She knows they will report everything anyway. Her master is nothing if not thorough. 

Wulf stops visiting Bren. “I can’t stand to see him like that,” he grunts. “You understand, don’t you Astrid, _liebchen_?” Astrid smiles and pats his hand, says of course she understands. She passes the journey to (name) imagining cutting each of Wulf’s fingers off one by one. 

Sometimes she casts little cantrips to ruffle the stark sheets of Bren’s cot, sometimes she casts globes of green light that dart and swoop above their heads, sometimes she speaks a word which scours clean the dirty soles of his bare feet. He seems to like the magic, but he never recognizes her, no matter what she does. Not even when she kisses him. 

After a year, Master Ikithon delicately suggests that she stop her visits. He is concerned for her health. It is time to move on. 

Astrid agrees. She studies, and she teaches, and she hunts and tortures and occasionally kills. She refuses to think about blank Bren in his little white room. She thinks instead of her Bren, his cocky smile, his flair for the dramatic, his hands cupping her face, her face bursting into flames. Sometimes she talks to him as if he’s really there, in her room, in her bed. She talks, but he never says anything. 

************************************************

_Greetings. Hello. To whom it may concern._

_I am trying to reach a young lady named Astrid, no last name given, who was a student about 11 years ago at your academy. She has inherited a bit of money from a distant relative: her uncle, Leonard Highfin. He's from the town of Nigeria, and his estate has employed me to find her in order to deliver the funds. Please reach out to me with her last known contact information or address. You can write me in care of The Pillow Trove Hotel, Zadash._

_Attention Mrs. Lavorre, Esquire. My legal practice thanks you in advance._

_Thank you,  
Nott and Brave Law Firm. _

The letter puzzles Astrid, and intrigues her. Of course she has no uncle Leonard, her uncles drank themselves to early graves, or are rotting in the Zemni Fields like her father. She supposes she should feel flattered, if the writer thinks she graduated from the academy eleven years ago. Thirty-four is not so terribly old, not for her, whose arms are studded with chips of green crystal. Everything means something, and this tell is a sign of ignorance. The writer operates on second-hand information. But they know her name, they know her address, and they are purposefully seeking her out. For what?

It is a strange letter, a puzzle. Too clumsy and random to be a trap, she thinks. She can’t help but grin as she buckles her bandolier across her chest, small vials of potions and poisons clinking merrily. She has not felt the thrill of the chase in some time. 

The girl at the front desk of the Pillow Trove is painted and pert, with enough of an attitude to make Astrid reach unconsciously for her sweep of hair to tug it over her scar. The girl tosses her dark hair and sucks the edge of her quill and tells Astrid she can’t possibly be expected to remember every guest who enters and leaves such an important and busy establishment as the Pillow Trove. Her memory recovers when Astrid transmutes the ink on the quill tip to acid. 

Through the shrieks and the tears and the choking on blood, Astrid is able to gather the following information:  
1\. The letter was left by a small humanoid with a strange porcelain half-mask, and a blue tiefling.   
2\. The tiefling had rented a room and picked up a package several weeks ago  
3\. Their other companions were a human woman in blue robes, a half-orc in strange armor, and a human man in an oversized coat who kept his head down.

Astrid has always been good at reading between the lines. A suspicion gnaws its way into her mind, sharp as a migraine. She leaves the girl gasping on the floor, lush lips corroded, dewy skin sizzled and scarred. Messy, perhaps, but Astrid doesn’t have the time to kill her.

The grey walls of the asylum loom above her. Astrid suppresses a shudder of revulsion as she walks beneath the archway. When the neat and fussy orderly delivers the news, eyes darting from side to side, Astrid isn’t even surprised. She knew Bren was gone, knew it in her gut. What wrecks her is the timeline. 

*****

_Five years._

It takes every ounce of willpower for Astrid to keep her face blank and smooth, as she walks with measured steps through the echoing halls of Master Ikithon’s manor. 

“Astrid, my dear,” He looks up from his desk, piles of paper neatly stacked, a faintly preoccupied expression on his face. “You have been busy. Zadash, then the Pearlbow Wilderness, and now my humble abode.”

Astrid summons her Mage hand and uses it to sweep his papers to the floor. 

“Five years,” she croaks, the words dry in her throat. “Bren has been gone for five years. You never told me.”

Looking at the papers drifting like snow around his office, Master Ikithon’s expression turns pitying, with just a hint of disapproval. 

“I had hoped you would not react so violently. These...hysterics are exactly what I feared. They will not help us find Bren, and they do you no credit, my dear.”

Astrid’s face heats with shame and fury. “You had no right -”

“I had every right,” Master Ikithon stands, unfolding himself to his full height. “I care about you. I care about Bren. His state is...delicate. He is dangerous, as you well know.” Astrid will not, she will not reach for her scarred neck. “Console yourself in knowing that I am monitoring the situation.”

 _Five years._

With a wave of his hand, Master Ikithon raises the papers from their drifts on the floor, dancing them into neat piles once more. “You are the strongest of my pupils,” he tells her, his eyes kind. “Summon that strength now. Compose yourself, for soon I will have need of your talents, my Astrid.”

She nods, and summons a smile that stretches her scars painfully. It’s all she can do to cross the garden at a walk, to climb the stone steps to her modest home, to open the door. 

_Five years and no letter, no Sending, no sigil or sign of him._

She locks the door behind her, bolts and wards clicking into place, and vomits all over the entryway. Bile and bitterness spill across the polished wood floor. 

_Five years, and he never tried to find you. Until now._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a while I thought I was the dragon.  
> I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was  
>  the princess,  
> cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,  
>  young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with  
> confidence  
>  but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,  
> while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,  
>  and getting stabbed to death.

The servant brings word of a man at the door (she has servants now, people to cook and clean while she studies and scries and reads, something she only dreamed of as a girl). It is comforting to be stamped into a shape. It is comforting to serve the greater good. 

She was not expecting Bren. Master Ikithon had warned her, of course, that he was in Rexxentrum, had sat with her and talked her through what he might ask, what she might say.   
But she didn’t think he would come to her, straight to her door. He is Bren but he is not. Her contacts say this man calls himself Caleb Widogast. This man stoops, breathless and stuttering, but his eyes scorch across her face and her arms when she rolls up her sleeves. He is more and less than she expected, all at once. 

He wants to apologize. He says he is glad to see her. He breaks out in a cold sweat as he sits on her couch and questions her about that night. 

She can’t help herself. She reaches out and touches his cheek, a gesture that once was as   
natural as casting a spell. 

“I will never forget what we were,” he murmurs, and neither can she. “I can’t shake it, and even after all these years, I still care about you,” and her heart soars at these words ~~stupid heart~~. “But he has blinded you, and Wulf…”

 _No,_ Astrid thinks, _You are the blind one, Bren._. Blind to their potential, blind to the future. She suddenly wishes she had poisoned his tea. She settles for resting her hand on his knee. He quirks one of his thin-lipped smiles at her. He still questions, he still doubts. He still does not understand that their safety, the safety of the Empire, is as fragile as a soap bubble, protected only by the work of people like her. 

“You have always been ambitious,” he murmurs, and she glows inside. Finally he understands. She cannot destroy Trent alone, she has known that since she was a little girl. But with Bren, anything seems possible.   
“So are you, apparently, Bren.”

He runs his thumb down her scar. The heat of his touch makes her shiver. 

“Yeah, maybe. My friends are depending on me.” And then he is standing up, and she is walking him to the door, and he is gone. 

************************************************

Master Ikithon’s garden is lush and verdant. The grass swishes and whispers against approaching ankles. The hedgerows are thick with thorns to block eavesdroppers. Jets of water burble into the marble basin of a fountain, drowning out their voices from prying ears. And of course, their amulets ward against spies more magical in nature. The black tourmaline pendant hangs over her heart, jumping ever so slightly in time with her heartbeat. ~~Dread curls in Astrid’s stomach~~

“My children,” the old wizard’s smile is soft and wistful. “How much you have grown. It has been too long.” He pours them each a steaming cup of lemon tea from a teapot etched with maze-like designs.

Astrid unclenches her hands from her skirt to take the cup. She refuses the proffered biscuits. In the chair opposite, Wulf raises an eyebrow at her as he shoves three in his mouth at once. 

“I have some news,” Master Ikithon tells them.  
“It’s about Bren,” Astrid blurts out, then catches her lip with her teeth. Eadwulf stills in his seat.   
“Very good, Astrid,” Master Ikithon murmurs. “Quick as ever.”  
“Is he dead?” Astrid asks, her stomach flipping with dread ~~or with hope.~~

For a moment, something flickers across Master Ikithon’s face. Anger? Fear? Amusement? It’s gone too quickly for her to name.   
“Quite the opposite, actually,” the old wizard says calmly. “In fact, our lost pup has returned.”

“He’s here?” Astrid leaps to her feet, scanning the garden path, the hedgerows. Blood thrums in her ears, almost drowning out Master’s Ikithon’s laughter.   
“Not now I’m afraid, although I appreciate this show of eagerness. I’m sure Bren will appreciate it too, in good time.”

A blush races up her scarred neck and spreads across her face, burning like fire. She looks down to see the tea steaming in her lap, spreading across her skirts, the delicate cup shattered in her hands. 

“Master, I’m sorry, I -”  
“No matter,” Trent interrupts smoothly, and Wulf is already curling his fingers into somatic patterns. Eadwulf’s Prestidigitation makes quick work of the mess as his voice echoes through her head with Message. “No use crying over spilled tea.” She shoots him a strained smile. 

Master Ikithon tells them of Bren’s impending visit, of the dinner invitation. He forbids them from approaching him before the dinner. No, forbid is too strong a word. He _counsels_ them against it. “Everything in good time,” he says, and rises from his chair, and disappears. 

********  
Eadwulf waits until they have left the grounds of the Candles, until their voices are almost swallowed up by the rattle of carts and shouts of people on the street. He pulls out his flask and takes a sip, passes it to her. It burns going down her throat ~~better inside than outside~~. 

Astrid’s grey eyes meet Eadwulf’s dark ones. They are not as close as they were at seventeen, each entrusted over the years with their own assignments, their own secrets. But they don’t need Message to understand what the other is thinking.   
“It’s a bad idea, Astrid.”  
“Perhaps. But I’m going to find him,” she says.   
“Really, really, really really bad -”  
“I’m not an idiot!” she snaps. “Or a child.”   
Wulf hands her the flask again, his version of an apology. Astrid unclenches her jaw, takes a breath.   
“I won’t - talk to him. That didn’t go well last time.” She holds her breath as Wulf carefully screws the lid back on his flask and tucks it into its holster. Perhaps it has been too long, and he will make her go alone, as he had in , ~~or he will tell Trent~~.  
“You’re lucky I have some spell slots left,” Wulf sighs, and follows her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary and fic title from Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has kudosed and commented! I tear up every time I see a notification from A03 in my inbox. I love reading your insights on the Blumencrew.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if... Astrid and Eadwulf spied on Bren at the Bierhall?
> 
> _Spoilers for Season 2 through Episode 109_

_Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.  
You still get to be the hero.  
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!  
What more do you want? _

Disguise Self settles over Astrid's skin like a heavy cloak. Some twisted part of her considers, briefly the guise of a tiefling, but dismisses it as too conspicuous. She settles on an half-elf instead, dark-haired and ordinary. She looks down at Wulf for once, he’s clearly delighted to pose as a gnome, standing about a third of his usual height.   
“Ready?”  
“Ready.”

The beer hall echoes with laughter and conversation. It smells like sour ale and overcooked bratwursts and too many sweating bodies. Astrid takes a deep breath, holding it in her lungs. 

Wulf brings her an ale, foam floating on top. “Just like old times,” he grins. Astrid sips gratefully.   
“This place hasn’t changed a bit,” Wulf says, looking around. Astrid scans the room, and sees - them. 

They are all here, the Mighty Nein, the whole ridiculous pack of them. Astrid runs a critical eye over the strange rabble of humanoids. Astrid knows better than to underestimate them, of course, she’s read the reports. But they all looks so...colorful. Unserious. She wonders, not for the first time, if this is some elaborate game of Ikithon’s. 

They gaze around the _Bierhalle_ with eager interest and watch Bren carefully, as if he is a glyph of warding that could go off at any moment. Particularly the black-haired halfling, who bears her teeth in a feral way that is not quite smile, not quite snarl, and the blue tiefling. Bren seems unaware of his friends’ scrutiny. He buys pints for the lot of them and herds them towards the dance floor, as if they are merely having a night out together. As if the Archmage of Propaganda and the dogs of the Cerberus Assembly are not breathing down Bren’s neck. 

Beside her, Wulf inhales sharply. Astrid jumps at the sound.  
“What?” she hisses.  
Eadwulf gestures at the spinning couples on the dance floor.   
“It’s us,” he says. Astrid narrows her eyes. 

The human woman, dark-skinned and sharp-eyed. The half-orc wearing his armor like a second skin. Astrid watches them whirl around the dance floor, the human woman looking up into Bren’s eyes, his head inclined to catch her words, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. 

Astrid feels her heart clench, and for a moment darkness swims behind her eyes. Beer slops over her hand and onto her shoes, spattering the floor.   
~~Replaced.~~  
She feels the tankard, suddenly heavy, too heavy, taken gently from her hands.   
“You all right?” Wulf asks. He darts a glance towards the dance floor.   
“We should go.”  
“Nein,” Astrid mutters, “I am myself again. And he is up to something.”

Wulf is right, there are...shades of them, the three poor kids from Blumenthal ~~poor but drunk on their newfound power~~ in Bren’s motley group of new friends. The half-orc shares Eadwulf’s bulk, his grounded demeanor, his searching, steady gaze. The human woman is tense as a bowstring, her eyes dart around the room even as she throws her head back in laughter. Clever and calculating, like Astrid herself. Bren is, of course, Bren. 

Or is he? Astrid wonders. Maybe it’s the beer, maybe it’s the torchlight or the music or the passage of too many years, but the man who glides along the dance floor, who calls himself Caleb Widogast, is a stranger to her. The old confidence is replaced by wariness. His angles are sharper, pale skin drawn tight over chin and cheekbones. Everything about him is suddenly strange: his thin smile, his hunched shoulders, his long hair bound at the nape of his neck ~~she remembers kissing that neck~~. He burns, alight with some inner fire that glitters in his eyes even as it consumes him. 

Astrid forces her nails into her palms until they bleed, the bright crescents of pain steadying her. _Pain is instructive. Pain is clarifying._ Master Ikithon’s voice croons in her head. He has no need of Sending spells. His voice has been there since she was a girl, soothing, guiding, punishing. _Good girl. Now, what do you see?_

A blur of blue. The tiefling spins like a child in the middle of the floor, dancing like no one was watching. Of course, someone was always watching. _Little fool_ She wonders how this one has survived so long in such deadly company. Perhaps the half-orc who keeps darting furtive glances at her is responsible. But the horned woman’s eyes skip past the half-orc, trained on Bren as he dips the monk of the Cobalt Soul. _Interesting_

Astrid sees the way the blue one’s face lights up when Bren comes towards her. Sees the look of hope curdle to disappointment as he takes the hand of the half-orc instead of hers. Sees her paste a smile on as she keeps darting glances over her shoulder at Bren while she’s in the half-orc’s arms. Astrid feels the low fire in her belly, the heat of the hunt. The blue tiefling raises her arm gracefully, a small, dull object clenched in her hand.

Smoke fills the room, acrid and stinking. Astrid chokes on it. _Stupid, stupid,_ she thinks to herself, clumsy to not see that coming. She was letting Bren distract her from her work. She thought she had broken that habit. 

Eadwulf appears beside her, handkerchief held to his nose.   
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, already moving toward the door.  
“I’m all right,” Astrid says quickly. She hides a choking cough in her sleeve. Wulf treats her to a full eye-roll.   
“Then I’m getting another beer.”   
Astrid waves Wulf away and insinuates herself between a group of drinking dwarves, moving closer to the band. 

Bren was always an excellent liar, better than Wulf, better than her. He knew the lions’ den he was walking into. He knew the lions within it. He was one of them, after all. 

So Astrid watches for what Bren is _not_ doing. He barely looks at the tiefling woman. His eyes skip over her each time the dance brings them towards each other. Strange, considering how he is constantly evaluating everyone else in his party, and in the room. His aquiline nose scrunches unhappily.   
_The absence of something does not mean it is not there. The more the subject tries to avoid a wound, the deeper it cuts._

When the tiefling stretches onto the tips of her absurd pink shoes to kiss the half-orc’s cheek, Astrid has her answer. For suddenly Bren is beside his green friend once more, pulling him away from the tiefling woman’s blue lips. The move is swift, instinctive, like he can’t help himself. 

The heat of the hunt curls in Astrid’s belly. She runs through what she knows of the giddy blue girl, Jester Lavorre. Secret daughter of a famous courtesan. Channels her power from some strange, apostate god. Overfull of sweets and pranks - a glutton and a hedonist. _And vain,_ Astrid thinks, watching her spin about the dance floor with bells tinkling on her horns. 

Bren loves her, and here lies his weakness. He knows it too, or he would not spurn her publicly. He thinks to hide Jester from Master Ikithon and Wulf and Astrid herself. 

Astrid watches the tiefling, wondering. If the affection went both ways, it could prove very useful indeed. She should feel delighted. She should run to Master Ikithon at once and tell him of this tool to add to his arsenal. And yet… she watches as Bren deliberately does not look at the blue tiefling, and her stomach feels sour. 

“More beer?” Eadwulf sticks a foaming stein in front of her nose.   
“No,” Astrid mutters. “It turns my stomach.”   
“Please yourself,” Wulf shrugs and takes a sip from each. Astrid can’t help it.   
“That’s mine!” she half-shrieks, reaching for the stein as Eadwulf holds it high above her head.   
And she can’t help but laugh, at the nerve and the foam mustache forming on his upper lip.Then she can’t stop laughing, because it’s been so long, and he looks so stupid, and it feels so good. 

In the dark corner of the hall, Bren turns, his sharp eyes scanning the crowd.   
The laughter dies in Astrid’s throat, even as Wulf’s eyes harden.   
“We must go,” Astrid hisses. Wulf nods and drains the beer. 

By the time Bren pushes through the crowd to the bar, they are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would it be a fic of mine if there wasn't pining Widojest?

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know what this is folks, I just have a lot of feelings about the Blumenkrew, especially Astrid. They break my heart and this is how I deal with it.
> 
> Poem excerpts and fic title are taken from Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out[ by Richard Siken.](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48158/litany-in-which-certain-things-are-crossed-out)


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